The Value of Student Teaching

While in my first "real" teaching job, our school took on a small group of student teachers. It didn't take long for  me to identify them in the hallways. Student teachers are generally a little overdressed, and so worn out that they appear to be sleepwalking.  I'm sure I once appeared to be in a similarly zombie-like state, given that I somehow managed to survive my last semester of graduate school on four hours of sleep per night (sometimes less). My first year of full time teaching, busy as it was, was easy by comparison.

A recent post at the HechingerEd blog draws attention to a recent study of the current state of student teaching:

A new study by the National Council on Teacher Quality out this week finds fault with the way many schools of education run their student teaching programs, however. Among other issues, the NCTQ criticizes a common set up in many teacher training programs where schools, not the colleges, get to pick which mentor teachers will get student teachers assigned to them. (The NCTQ would prefer that schools of education pick the teacher mentors.) It also points out that often these mentors aren’t required to be highly qualified or good at mentoring.

Student teaching and mentorship in the first years of one's career are crucial to new teacher quality and retention. While classes grounded in theory are quite valuable, student teaching provides an opportunity to apply theory to practice, much the same way immediate use of new vocabulary allows for speedier mastery of a new language. One of the reasons I enrolled in a 1-year credentialing program was because I wanted to do my student teaching and my coursework together, so that I might immediately apply my training.

I can't speak for every program, but I can say that my own student teaching experience tells me that the issues raised in the study are worthy of consideration.  The mentorship my cohort received from our cooperating teachers was surprisingly uneven, in spite of (and in some unfortunate cases no thanks to) efforts of supervisors and administrators. It ranged ranged from brilliant to blatantly negligent.  All of the teachers with whom we were paired were very good at making their own classrooms work. What varied was their level of interest and skill when it came to mentoring a new teacher. Some lacked experience as cooperating teachers, others lacked time or motivation. At one of the school sites our program worked with, the culture of the school was out of step with the culture of the teacher education program.

This last problem is the easiest to address. The university can (and sometimes does) choose not to send student teachers to schools that are not able to provide the kind of mentorship that is needed. 

So what to do about issues of time, skill, and motivation? Cooperating teachers need to be interested in the future of the profession. They should take on student teachers willingly, not as a favor to someone, or because their principals tell them to do so.  They should be models of professional behavior who have the respect of their colleagues. Teacher education programs need to take into account the number of interested cooperating teachers available when deciding how large a class to admit every year.  It might be worth considering some brief training for cooperating teachers with minimal experience. 

Student teachers also need to have a voice when problems arise.  Most are at the bottom of the political pecking order in their school sites, are overworked and sleep-deprived, and may not feel comfortable reporting problems to supervisors or administrators. Student teachers should not have to worry about endangering their carreers when faced with bad mentorship. Programs need to have procedures in place to ensure this. Student teachers are, after all, adults, and should be taken seriously as such when they have a legitimate grievance.

Whatever the solutions, they need to be researched-based, effective, and (for pity's sake) minimal on the paperwork. 

Student teachers and their mentors have enough paperwork already.

The good news, I suppose, is that, while good mentorship is invaluable (and can be pleasant and even exciting),  even bad mentorship can be instructive to a motivated person.   If nothing else, it reminds the often naïve student teacher that the world of education, like everything else that is human, has its frustrations and flaws.

Ruler tip to: EducationNews.org

Missing: 160 Million Girls

It's not every day that the New York Times publishes an op. ed. piece with which I agree.  Today's "160 Million and Counting," in which Ross Douthat discusses the problem of sex-selective abortion and its impact worldwide is one of those rare pieces. Specifically, his article revolves around Mara Hvistendahl's recent book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.

Though Hvistendahl describes herself as "pro-abortion", her work is gaining attention from many different spheres. For those who favor abortion as a means of empowering women and for those who also favor population control, her findings are raising some very necessary questions.  For those who are pro-life, and especially for pro-life feminists, it confirms fears that (politically and eugenically motivated) American-sponsored abortion and population control programs in the third world would backfire, creating social change that actually leads to greater violence and increased  oppression of women.

Douthat discusses the implications of her findings in his article. He writes:

The spread of sex-selective abortion is often framed as a simple case of modern science being abused by patriarchal, misogynistic cultures. Patriarchy is certainly part of the story, but as Hvistendahl points out, the reality is more complicated — and more depressing.

Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less. In many communities, she writes, “women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,” because male offspring bring higher social status. In countries like India, sex selection began in “the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” before spreading down the income ladder.

Moreover, Western governments and philanthropic institutions have their fingerprints all over the story of the world’s missing women.

...

...A self-proclaimed agnostic about when life begins, Hvistendahl insists that she hasn’t written “a book about death and killing.” But this leaves her struggling to define a victim for the crime that she’s uncovered.

It’s society at large, she argues, citing evidence that gender-imbalanced countries tend to be violent and unstable. It’s the women in those countries, she adds, pointing out that skewed sex ratios are associated with increased prostitution and sex trafficking.

Read the rest at the New York Times.



Hvistendahl's book has exposed the consequences of the kind of feminism that early American feminists opposed: the kind that says that women must be like men to be equal to them, and must sacrifice the lives of their children as a condition of participation in society.

Hopefully, in light of this, more people will begin to realize that some choices are wrong.

Schoolmarm ruler wave to The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
For more on pro-life feminism, visit Feminists for Life of America.

Birth control pills increase risk for gallstones.

According to an info sheet at the University of Michigan:

"If you have gallstones and are taking birth control pills, you may want to ask your health care provider if you should use another method of birth control. "


And, according to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC):

"Women are twice as likely as men to develop gallstones. Excess estrogen from pregnancy, hormone replacement therapy, and birth control pills appears to increase cholesterol levels in bile and decrease gallbladder movement, which can lead to gallstones."

Gallstones can cause anything from annoying discomfort to life-threatening illness.

One more item to add to our list of many reasons to consider Natural Family Planning and avoid synthetic hormones.

Anti-Feminism and the Birth Control Pill

Interestingly enough, even in the Pill's earliest days, it was known to have poisonous effects on the female body. But, during the initial trials in the 1950s, researchers John Rock and Gregory Pincus were so excited about its effectiveness they didn't stop to think about whether or not they were harming women (emphasis mine):

Dr. Edris Rice-Wray, a faculty member of the Puerto Rico Medical School and medical director of the Puerto Rico Family Planning Association, was in charge of the trials. After a year of tests, Dr. Rice-Wray reported good news to Pincus. The Pill was 100% effective when taken properly. She also informed him that 17% of the women in the study complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain and vomiting. So serious and sustained were the reactions that Rice-Wray told Pincus that a 10-milligram dose of Enovid caused "too many side reactions to be generally acceptable."

Rock and Pincus quickly dismissed Rice-Wray's conclusions. Their patients in Boston had experienced far fewer negative reactions, and they believed many of the complaints were psychosomatic. The men also felt that problems such as bloating and nausea were minor compared to the contraceptive benefits of the drug. Although three women died while participating in the trials, no investigation was conducted to see if the Pill had caused the young women's deaths. Confident in the safety of the Pill, Pincus and Rock took no action to assess the root cause of the side effects.

...

In later years, Pincus's team would be accused of deceit, colonialism and the exploitation of poor women of color. The women had only been told that they were taking a drug that prevented pregnancy, not that this was a clinical trial, that the Pill was experimental or that there was a chance of potentially dangerous side effects. Pincus and Rock, however, believed they were following the appropriate ethical standards of the time. In the 1950s, research involving human subjects was much less regulated than it is today. Informed consent standards were minimal and only the most basic toxicity tests were required for human trials.

(Source: PBS.org)

In other words, they decided the pill was safe and the women were just hysterical little things and the side effects were all in their heads.

There are few things more frustrating than having a doctor dismiss symptoms that you know are real by conveniently filing you away as hysterical woman. This has only happened to me personally on one occasion, but that does not make it any less infuriating.

Also interesting here is that a female researcher raised concern about the harmful side-effects, only to be dismissed herself by these two men who apparently believed that not being pregnant is much more important than being healthy.

All good feminists should be outraged by this. So should anyone concerned about racial equality and imperialism, for that matter. We are told that the pill is supposed to be liberating for women, but it was (no pun intended) conceived through the exploitation of women. Women who were not even fully informed about the fact that they were test subjects! So much for choices.

Pill harms environment/population, says its inventor

Yes ladies and gentlemen. One of the men responsible for producing the pill says it is a "demographic catastrophe" and an environmental hazard.

From Cathnews.com:

Eighty five year old Carl Djerassi the Austrian chemist who helped invent the contraceptive pill now says that his co-creation has led to a "demographic catastrophe."

In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tonnes of hormones" that had impaired male fertility, The Taiwan Times says.

The assault began with a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard by Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step toward the earliest oral contraceptive pill.

Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction." He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

...

The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse, but given less attention, than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy."

Of course the secular world is doing its usual scoffing. The Taipei Times headlines this story with "Catholic Church renews its attack on contraceptive pill". (Sorry, folks. You can't renew something that never let up in the first place.). Of course, there is a token quotation from a representative of an environmentalist group:

Angelo Bonelli, of the Italian Green party, said it was the first he had heard of a link between the pill and environmental pollution. The worst of poisons were to be found in the water supply.

“It strikes me as idiosyncratic to be worried about this,” he said.

I'm astonished that this is the "first he had heard" about this when secular researchers in Canada and the United States have recognized the negative environmental effects of hormonal contraceptive use on aquatic life and on human populations, which include poisoning fish, and causing increased rates of cancer in the people who eat them. The reasearch in Canada goes as far back as 2004.



So lets take stock here. So far the pill has managed to poison:
Fish
Men who eat fish
Women
Society
The Planet.

NFP, anybody?

--------------------------------------
Tip of the Schoolmarm Ruler to my husband, who told me about this.

October: Right to Life and Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Funny that these two events would coincide, though you'll probably only see one of them on NBC.

This would be a good time to mention (again) that, according to the Mayo clinic and others, there is a link between use of the birth control pill and breast cancer. See this earlier post for more details on that.


Interestingly enough, there is also a link between abortion and breast cancer, in addition to other negative effects abortion can have on the physical and mental health of women, even when it is "safe and legal".

According to The Coalition on Abortion/BreastCancer:



As of 2006, eight medical organizations recognize that abortion raises a woman's risk for breast cancer, independently of the risk of delaying the birth of a first child (a secondary effect that all experts already acknowledge). An additional medical organization, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, issued a statement in 2003 calling on doctors to inform patients about a "highly plausible" relationship between abortion and breast cancer.

The relationship is so plausible, in fact, that:

General counsel for [the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons] wrote an article for its journal warning doctors that three women (two Americans, one Australian) successfully sued their abortion providers for neglecting to disclose the risks of breast cancer and emotional harm, although none of the women had developed the disease.


If you prefer getting information on this issue from books, try Breast Cancer: Its link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill by Chris Kahlenborn, MD. Published by One More Soul

No Literacy Gap in Homeschooled Boys and Girls

Let's face it. Boys and girls do not always have the same taste in literature.

Take Pride and Prejudice for example. Girls love it.

Boys often lament that it is boring and frightfully lacking in explosions. Even one or two good sword fights or a duel would be nice. Where's the blood?

The differences between boys and girls have been an issue in classrooms for some time now. For awhile, the issue was getting girls to catch up with boys. Lately, it has been the other way around.

This does not seem to be a problem for homeschoolers, however. Something for California courts and lawmakers (and the rest of us) to consider:

Why Johnny Can't Read: Schools Favor Girls

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor

The article makes two interesting points:

...

The research, by psychology professor Judith Kleinfeld at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, finds that nearly one-quarter of high school seniors across the United States who are sons of white, college-educated parents have woeful reading skills, ranking "below basic" on a national standardized test.

"These boys cannot read a newspaper and get the main point," Kleinfeld told LiveScience. "These boys cannot read directions for how to use equipment and follow them."

And the problem is getting worse.

...

In separate research that Kleinfeld is also preparing for publication, she has possibly gotten to the root of the problem.

"Here's a fascinating fact," she said. "There is no literacy gap in home-schooled boys and girls."

"Why? In school, teachers emphasize reading literature and talking about character and feelings," she said. "This way of teaching reading does not turn boys on. Boys prefer reading nonfiction, such as history and adventure books. When they are taught at home, parents are more likely to let them follow their interests."

English educators, incidentally, are now being trained to make their classrooms more flexible in terms of literature content, allowing student interests to play a role. Some teacher educators (i.e. people who teach other teachers how to teach) are also emphasizing methods other than "reader response" (the method Kleinfeld describes above), and encouraging deep thinking and serious literary criticism.

While it is tempting (especially if one is dealing with a classroom full of barely literate high schoolers) to stick to reader response because it is "easier", I find that kids often respond better when they feel like their teachers are actually teaching them something different and interesting. Even students whose reading skills are below grade level can benefit from instruction on various approaches to literary criticism. The benefit is that when they master these new skills, they have the psychological reward of "feeling smart" and this tends to create greater interest in the curriculum. Kids want to be challenged.

The beauty of homeschooling is that children get customized instruction from their parents, who in most cases are devoted to their education and work very hard to give them the best instruction possible. While there are also advantages to the regular classroom, even small classes do not allow for the level of individual attention that students can receive in a homeschool setting, which means boys who are falling behind can be re-engaged.

So should we stop teaching Pride and Prejudice? I'm not ready to go that far yet. Classics must be read. However, perhaps it is worth changing our approach to it, to allow boys to see merit in books that possess few of the qualities one might find in an action movie.


Tip of the schoolmarm ruler to: Amy at Real Catholic

Another Study Confirms Estrogen Footprints

This time at the University of New Brunswick. See the story at LifeSite News. and also at the Gulf of Maine Times, MedicalNewsToday.com. Looking for a non-pro-life source? Even the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which supports embryonic stem cell research is covering this on their EurekAlert news site.

To review: Women take the pill, and the hormones are excreted into the sewage system. They do not get filtered out by water treatment processes, and end up back in the environment, where they do bizarre things to fish populations. To top it off, people who eat the fish, also eat the hormones.

I posted on this twice before. The first time, I linked to a report from Canada's Freshwater Institute Fisheries and Oceans on the effects of synthetic hormones on aquatic life.

The second post links to a Scientific American article that discusses potential breast cancer risks for human populations that ingest fish from waters contaminated with synthetic hormones. Hormones which are classified as known carcinogens by the World Health Organization, according to documents from a Mayo Clinic Study which I have cited previously.

That's three separate studies so far, people.

Think about it.

Nod: Tito

Brain Chemistry and Bonding

The hormone Ocytocin appears to be part of the hard-wiring in the female brain that helps women bond emotionally to their sex partners (as well as their friends and children). While both men and women produce this hormone, it is most powerful when combined with the female hormone estrogen, according to some of the articles I link to below.

Even MSNBC posts an interview with an expert who states:

One of the reasons [women don’t understand how men can differentiate so easily between love and sex] is that during sex, women produce lots of oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates a strong emotional connection. As a result, women are more emotionally integrated when it comes to sex. That’s why casual sex and hookups often backfire for lots of women. ...

There is also some suggestion that the bonding effect is more powerful over time spent with a single partner.

Good news for us married women. Bad news for the "hookup culture" as Miriam Grossman notes in an article Dawn Eden cited today:

[UCLA] psychiatrist [Grossman] lamented the "mental health crisis on our campuses." Prozac, she said, is the number one prescribed medication. And Grossman said the rise in prescription anti-depressant use among young women is linked to the rise in the number of women who come to the health center because of sexual relationships.

"We have a problem. We should be alarmed, but we should not be surprised," she said. Young people are influenced by a popular culture that is constantly bombarding them with blatant lies about sex, she said. Grossman said television shows, including Sex and the City and Friends, give a false notion that sex can be divorced from emotions.

It gives the message that sex is "recreational without consequences and that condoms provide good enough protection," she said. Teenagers arrive on college campuses with those ideas and are rudely awakened when they learn that they have been deceived.

"High risk behaviors are being promoted," said Grossman. Because of that, she said, "the number of sexually transmitted diseases has exploded."

The facts are evident, she said, but health care professionals are not responsibly educating young people. Hard science alone proves that bonding hormones are released in a woman’s body during sexual activity. "It cannot be disputed," she said. Grossman said science has shown the release of the hormone oxytocin in a woman’s system during such activity makes her more susceptible to distress, anxiety and depression with a "hooking-up" situation.

Related Articles:
Ocytocin - The Cuddle Hormone (Note: Very secular site.)
Femme Mentale (San Francisco Gate--really!)
Neurobiology of Human Sexuality by Tania Romero, Bryn Mawr College

Monthly Blessings...

Just when they come out with birth control pills that can completely suppress our periods, we discover that menstrual blood may be a highly accessible source of useful adult stem cells.

Read the story here.

Study links birth control pill to arterial plaque

As if increased risk of blood clots isn't enough by itself.

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A European study released on Tuesday has raised new concerns about the safety of women's long-term use of the birth control pill, suggesting increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

Women who had used oral contraceptives were more likely than those who did not take the pill to have a buildup of plaque in their arteries, the researchers told an American Heart Association meeting.

"The main concern is if you have higher plaque levels that you might develop a clot on one of these plaques and have a stroke or a myocardial infarction (heart attack) or sudden cardiac death," Dr. Ernst Rietzschel of Ghent University in Belgium, who led the research, told reporters.

"That's the main risk with having plaque, with having atherosclerosis."

Rietzschel's team studied 1,301 women ages 35 to 55.

Of them, 81 percent had used the pill, for an average of 13 years. The researchers saw a rise of 20 to 30 percent in arterial plaque in two big arteries -- the carotid in the neck and the femoral in the leg -- for each decade of use.

The researchers measured plaque levels using a technique called vascular echography.


In atherosclerosis, there is a hardening and narrowing of the arteries caused by the slow buildup of plaque, made up of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other material, on the inside of artery walls.



See Reuters.com for the full story.


I wonder if anyone is planning to study women in their twenties who have been using the pill for 12-13 years (As in, since junior high), especially now that some are pushing to make the Pill more accessible to girls as young as 11.

Another study that re-states the obvious

Big news, ladies and gentlemen!

Drumroll please...

Parent involvement is the most important factor in student academic success!

It's even more important than where you send your child.

They could have just paid me the money they spent on this research. I could have told them the same thing.


Hat tip: Catholic Mom

Interesting: NSAID's and infertility?

I can't take NSAID's (Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) myself. These include medicines like aleve an asprin.

But I heard recently that they can sometimes interfere with ovulation.

Here is a link to a list of abstracts of studies that relate to this connection.

Serious questions raised about Gardasil

Judicial Watch obtains FDA documentation of adverse reactions to the Gardasil vaccine, including deaths from cardiovascular complications.

The New England Journal of Medicine questions the effectiveness of the vaccine:
See here

The NEJM article is written with physicians in mind and contains great deal of medical jargon. For summaries in layman's terms see articles at the San Francisco Gate (I'm amazed they even covered this), the Seattle Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Several state governments are willing to force young girls to get this vaccine for school attendance, despite these serious questions. Mandating the vaccine at this stage, in light of such information as this, is completely irresponsible, especially for a disease that is not spread by casual classroom contact. Parents and adult women who are interested in the vaccine, and still wish to obtain it voluntarily after assessing the risks, should be allowed to do so, but to force the vaccine on the unsuspecting (and in many cases unwilling) public makes no sense.

Birth Control Pills Raise Breast Cancer Risk

A Mayo Clinic meta study finds link between oral contraceptive pill use and increased pre-menopausal breast cancer risk. This connection is not entirely new to the medical community. The study documentation states (emphasis and brackets mine):

Approximately 2 in 15 American women are expected to develop breast cancer in their lifetime, and nearly 40,000 women die of the disease annually. During the past 4 decades [Incindentally, that's since thie 1960's when the Pill began to pick up greater popularity], breast cancer rates have risen steadily worldwide and have risen even faster in more developed countries, especially among younger women...

The Women’s Health Initiative Clinical Trial reported that prolonged exposure to exogenous estrogens and progestins in hormone therapy increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. In addition, the World Health Organization recently classified both postmenopausal hormone replacement and oral contraceptives (OCs) as group 1 carcinogens.



The ultimate conclusion of the study?

Use of OCs is associated with an increased risk of premenopausal breast cancer, especially with use before FFTP [First Full-Term Pregnancy] in parous women.

Read the entire 13 page document here.

"Parous" women are women who have had at least one full therm pregnancy. The translation? If you used birth control pills before your first full term pregnancy, your risk is particularly elevated. This is because "Differentiation of the mammary gland associated with pregnancy inhibits carcinogenic initiation and may explain the natural protection that pregnancy has been shown to confer."

Now, I know for a fact that there are women my age who were using the pill during their adolescence for everything from cycle regulation, to acne control to birth control--even as young as thirteen. And now they face increased breast-cancer risk because people have been throwing these pills around without hesitation? Not cool.

Of course, this is also bad news for women who are on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to combat hot flashes and osteoporosis. The good news for them is HRT contains lower doses of estrogens and progestins than what are found in birth control pills. The other good news is, in the years since this has been known (yes, it's been years), the increased cancer risks from HRT have caused doctors to minimize its use, and drug companies have been coming out with new treatments for osteoporosis.

For those of us who have a little while before we will need to worry about menopause, this certainly gives us one more reason (in addition to increased cardiovascular risks such as stroke and heart attack) to avoid ingesting synthetic hormones during our reproductive years, especially if we have not yet had a full-term pregnancy. Once again, another reason to consider NFP, and one more reason to ask your doctor for other ideas if s/he wants to use oral contraceptives to treat your (or your daughter's) acne or menstrual cramps. Hmm. PMS or increased breast cancer risk...gee tough decision.

Not Tonight Honey: "The Pill" decreases libido.

Never mind fatigue and headaches. The January 2006 issue of the Journal of Sexual medicine says that birth control pills can decrease libido in women. Somewhat self-defeating when you think about why most people use them.

Not that increased risk of stroke and blood clots isn't bad enough or anything...

One more reason to think about natural methods.

They didn't have to do a big expensive study...

...to discover that religion is good for kids. I could have told them this myself.

San Francisco Gate on Conservative "Breeders"

The liberals are rejoicing in the town that gave us Nancy Pelosi. They think conservatism is dying, and naturally polls and statistics are at the heart of it.

Apparently, most 18-25 year olds identify themselves as liberal.Woohoo! All they have to do is wait for those crusty old conservatives to die! But wait a minute, many 18-25 year olds were raised by baby-boomers and ex-hippies who waited till their 30's and 40's to have children. Of course they will take on their parents' world views. Plus, people are naturally a bit liberal from age 18-25. It is part of being young. There is no gaurantee they will still be that way once they are 40-something with a job and a mortgage--and maybe a child or two--or ten if they become religious conservatives. That brings me to the other little problem liberals are having.

For years now, I've been hearing conservative talk show hosts remind us that we will eventually outnumber liberals. After all, we have more children. And it turns out that 4 out of 5 of them will remain conservative as adults, at least according to unnamed research cited by a nervous liberal columnist at the San Francisco Gate.

This freaks them out. They just can't keep up with us! It's not fair! How can they pay the excessive rent on their tiny apartments, pay for their expensive green energy and carbon offsets, and still send their kids to the finest liberal college-prep preschools? How can they keep up with us without overpopulating the planet? Speaking of overpopulation, where will they even put children in those tiny over-priced apartments? Time for another social welfare program, I guess. Maybe a birth-offset program. Or, they could always move out of state, as I did, but most self-respecting California liberals would rather do just about anything than than move to the savage wilderness of Middle America. And don't even talk to them about Southern states, where the residents' necks are supposedly as red as the thermometers.

(Source)

Yes, the 'Frisco Libs picture our men scratching their exposed pot-bellies, watching NASCAR on TV, and calling to the slatternly, barefoot, pregnant woman in the kitchen to bring them another beer, while five little uncouth tobacco-chewing kids play on the floor with a mangy dog. (This is all in a shabby double-wide trailer) They figure we're all racist white rednecks with southern accents, limited vocabularies, barely any education, and menial, low-paying jobs. We think sex is dirty and evil (and yet somehow we manage to be "red-hot breeding machines" How is that possible? Shouldn't we be too exhausted from running after the four kids we have already to make more?) Oh, yes, and we all attend evangelical mega churches. I guess the columnist forgot to include us Catholics, who are even more notorious for having large families than our evangelical brethren. I'm hurt.

This is what the Left thinks of us, ladies and gentlemen.

Let them. It'll give me a laugh now and then when I tell them I'm a Conservative Latina, and a born and raised Coastal Californian to boot. The priceless stunned silence is quite amusing. Plus, I'm astonished that they haven't noticed how many of us--even some who have been home schooled-- make it through the institutions of higher education, which they themselves usually run, and and that some of us are getting cool jobs and advanced degrees out of the deal (no, we're not all becoming greedy big-business executives).

That suits me fine. If they persist in telling themselves that we are ignorant and incapable of independent thought, our conservative spawn will have a much easier time taking over "like a spiritual STD" as one columnist puts it. I'd prefer to think of my offspring in a more positive way, though. After all, each new human life is, from the moment of conception, a remarkable individual being made in the image of God. We have yet to cure anything with stem cells obtained by destroying them. But living human embryos, stem cells and all, may actually grow up to become the long-awaited cure for one thing at least: Left-coast liberalism.



Want to see the articles for yourself? Here you go, brace yourself for the finest examples of Bay Area journalism:
When Liberals Rule the World
Republicans are Red-Hot Breeding Machines (Podcast)
Republicans' Fertile Future.
Attention Liberals: Please Breed.


Hat tip: Catholic Pillow Fight

___________________________________
Addendum: Speaking of the South, Belle-ah over at Southern Somedays has posted some gorgeous pictures of Southern Springtimes. Libs, don't look at this. It might make you consider a relocation, and nobody wants that. :)

Protecting women: Frightening steps backward.

This is disgusting.

A British court did rapists a favor when it ruled drunk women can consent to sex, at least if they get drunk voluntarily. In the court case that led to this outrageous ruling, voluntary drinking did indeed play a part. The judges stated,

"...where the complainant has voluntarily consumed even substantial quantities of alcohol, but nevertheless remains capable of choosing whether or not to have intercourse, and in drink agrees to do so, this would not be rape."

The 19-year old victim in this case had consumed enough alcohol to lead to vomiting and partial memory loss. To my knowledge, these are obvious physical signs she'd be too impaired at that point to make rational decisions about much of anything except sleeping it off. How far does the intoxication have to go before she is no longer "capable" of choosing to have sex, your honors? Complete loss of consciousness?

I don't know what those judges were thinking. Wait, never mind, I can guess...



In related news, a UK study finds that alcohol is the real date rape drug, and voluntary drunkenness does play a part in allowing women to be easier victims of sexual assault.



Just in case you aren't sick enough yet:

A German court has allowed a man to continue to beat his wife and threaten to kill her because of his religion, and denied her request for an immediate divorce, which she requested to protect her own safety.

Adoption study shoots left in the foot.

I love reading articles about studies that try to prove social agendas. It's so much fun.

This latest one seems to indicate that kids are actually better off being raised by adoptive parents than by their biological parents, including single and step-parent situations.

The "powers that be" on the Left are trying to use this as an argument in favor of adoption by homosexual couples, though the study only covered heterosexual couples. However, in touting this study, they sabotage another key part of the leftist platform: abortion.

Some abortion proponents claim that it is better for a woman to kill her child in the womb than to put it up for adoption, because it would be too difficult for her to part with the child after carrying it for nine months, and some claim it would be better for the child, too, since adopted families are widely assumed to be inferior. Others take a more "feminist" view, and say the pregnant woman shouldn't have to be an incubator for the wealthy (as if the wealthy are the only ones who adopt), and leave the life of the child out of it completely. In short, for varied reasons, they believe that the only choices available to a woman with an unplanned pregnancy are abortion and raising an "unwanted" child.

If the results of this study are accurate (big if, considering the small scale of this study), it means the best option (especially for single women) IS adoption, as many of us pro-life folks have been saying all along. If one person is unable or unwilling to raise a child, there are couples who DO want the joys and responsibilities that come with being parents, who may, on average, embrace those possibilities with greater alacrity. So, through adoption, a woman can give great joy to at least three people, by giving her child a good life, and two other people the joy of raising that child. Talk about a way to give back! The article, however, never touches on this facet of the issue.

Surprise, surprise.